


One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts

by Decepticonsensual



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 20:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17291135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: Set post-Lost Light 25, with massive spoilers for the end of MTMTE/LL.Rodimus isn't in a good place right now.  Lonely, purposeless, and stuck under someone else's command, he's just about at the end of his rope - and the last thing he needs is a surprise ship inspection by a very familiar official.  One whose presence reminds Rodimus painfully of everything he's lost.Or maybe - just maybe - that'sexactlywhat he needs.





	One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Gift for Dingbatsy, who requested Rodimus/Minimus.

The _Exitus_ was just pulling away from Luna-1 when a crisp voice came over the comm. “Prowl to _Exitus._ You are not cleared for departure. Repeat: your departure clearance has been revoked. Reverse course and immediately return to dock.”

 

“Helm, reverse course.” Captain Thunderclash flicked the comm switch on the console. “Sir, yes, sir. May I inquire what the problem is?”

 

“We’ve identified discrepancies with your shipping manifest. Not exactly something we can let slide given the recent smuggling problems we’ve had, Captain.”

 

“Of course. We’re en route back to dock four.”

 

“Good. Once you arrive, join me in my office. I’ll send one of my officers to board the _Exitus_ and check the manifest against your cargo. Have your second-in-command accompany him.”

 

Thunderclash only hesitated briefly. “My second-in-command… of course, sir. May I ask how long you anticipate we’ll be delayed?”

 

“As long as it _takes,_ Thunderclash. Prowl out.”

 

Thunderclash turned from the abruptly silent comm just in time to see a familiar red-and-gold figure duck his head around the door to the bridge, then immediately backtrack and try to slip away when he saw Thunderclash looking at him.

 

“Ah, Rodimus, you’re back. Listen – I realise this is a bit soon, with the funeral just over, but your presence has been specifically requested. We need to...” The captain trailed off as he drew closer to his second, and noticed the bleary optics, the grey-tinged metal. There was a sluggishness to the way Rodimus tilted his head as he listened that suggested he’d been drinking again, and Thunderclash winced. “Walk with me?”

 

Rodimus’s mouth quirked up at one corner in what wasn’t quite a smile, and he saluted lazily before following Thunderclash into the corridor. Once they were away from the rest of the crew, Thunderclash sighed and turned to face his lieutenant. “You’re overcharged on duty.”

 

“I wasn’t supposed to be on duty this afternoon, _sir._ ”

 

“You’ve been asked to escort an official from Luna-1 on a surprise inspection -”

 

“Another death-defying adventure.” Rodimus mimed waving an invisible pennant. “Yay.”

 

“ _Rodimus._ ” The _Exitus’s_ second was eyeing him mulishly, as if daring Thunderclash to say more; instead, Thunderclash reached out and wrapped his fingers around Rodimus’s shoulder. “If you need additional leave or – or just someone to talk to, I hope you know you can come to me.”

 

Something in Rodimus’s expression crumpled, and he pinched the bridge of his nose sharply. “I – I know, Captain. You’re always very kind.” If there was a hint of an edge to that last word, it remained just a hint.

 

Thunderclash didn’t move. “Do you? Need a longer leave of absence? I can intercede with –”

 

“No, let’s just – deal with Prowl’s minion.” Rodimus brushed past him and led the way to the airlock, keying in the code to open it. “I wonder what kind of officious hard-aft he’s dug up to send us, since he’s so determined to screw with – with –”

 

Thunderclash peered through the airlock, curious, as he heard Rodimus’s engine choke, his voice dying in his throat.

 

A slight, familiar figure was making his way up the gangplank, nodding in response to Thunderclash’s salute. “Captain. It is a pleasure to see you looking well.”

 

“Mags!” Rodimus burst out. When the official turned towards him, he corrected himself, “Mims.” Then, “Ambus. Sorry.”

 

“Rodimus.” There was an odd croak to Minimus Ambus’s voice. He buried his head in his datapad, avoiding optic contact. Which was just as well, Thunderclash reflected, because the bright, artificial smile that had replaced the genuine joy on Rodimus’s face was a little hard to look at.

 

“Well,” Thunderclash said in the silence. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to it.”

 

“Yes, that would be best, Captain.” Minimus swiped to a new display without looking up. “I will be as efficient as I can. Believe me, I don’t want you to be delayed here a moment longer than necessary.”

 

***

 

“What do you mean, you want me to delay their departure?” Prowl had demanded not ten minutes earlier.

 

“It’s urgent. You didn’t see him at the funeral today; you left after the service.” Minimus Ambus had had his hands braced on Prowl’s desk, practically levering himself up to meet the larger bot’s gaze. “I watched him talk to Drift. He was… barely recognisable. I’m genuinely concerned about him, and I can’t simply let him leave on another years-long mission without speaking to him first.”

 

“So _call_ him, why are you dragging me into this?”

 

Minimus had looked at his hands. “Rodimus and I… didn’t part on the best of terms.” Prowl had rolled his optics, and Minimus had restrained himself from pointing out that Prowl’s own track record when it came to amicably ending relationships (or whatever Rodimus and Minimus had been; they’d never gotten as far as putting a label on it) was less than stellar. At least in Minimus and Rodimus’s case, no one had gotten punched, brainwashed, or kidnapped by mad scientists.

 

Then again, he’d supposed that what he was suggesting to Prowl _was_ kidnapping, of a sort. Hijacking, at the very least.

 

Swallowing, he had continued. “Please. Prowl. I’m won’t ask for Rodimus’s sake – I know you’ve never liked him –”

 

“ _He_ despises _me_. There’s a difference.” Prowl had smiled thinly.

 

“– but for… wait, what?”

 

“I have a long, _long_ slaglist, Ambus, and Rodimus is nowhere near the top of it. He’s fine by me.”

 

“Then help him, sir, please.” Starting to feel desperate in the face of Prowl’s sceptical expression, Minimus begged, “If you need, I’m happy to come up with an excuse for the delay… a… a visa issue, perhaps -”

 

“Minimus Ambus.” There had been a dangerous glint in Prowl’s optic. “Are you suggesting that _I_ can’t manipulate _paperwork_?”

 

Minimus had stepped back, desperation beginning to give way to hope. “Of course not.”

 

Lip curling, Prowl had picked up the microphone. “Prowl to _Exitus._ You are not cleared for departure.” He’d muted the comm for a moment. “What will you say to him?”

 

Minimus had found himself wishing that he knew how to answer.

 

***

 

Rodimus was almost unnervingly quiet as he led Minimus deeper into the ship. Minimus had rather been counting on his former captain to start up a conversation, which Minimus himself could then steer towards Rodimus’s emotional state. It hadn’t occurred to him that Rodimus might just… not talk at all.

 

So after ten minutes’ silence, Minimus – with all the gravitas of an Ultra Magnus, he noted ruefully – said, “This appears to be an extremely well-organised ship.”

 

“That’s Captain Thunderclash for you,” Rodimus answered without looking back. “Well-organised, efficient – you always liked him, didn’t you?” There was nothing but cheerful warmth in his tone, and yet something about it made Minimus stop walking.

 

“Do _you_?”

 

“Sure. Who wouldn’t be honoured to serve under the greatest Autobot who ever lived?”

 

A memory stirred in the back of Minimus’s processor. Its incongruity bothered him; it seemed to have happened a lifetime ago (though it hadn’t), and yet it was strangely vivid. More vivid, he realised, than much of what had taken place in between, after they’d all left the _Lost Light._ “Do you remember Rewind’s first film?” he asked quietly. “The documentary about life on the _Lost Light._ He asked each of us a question.”

 

Rodimus had gone very still.

 

“Are you happy, Rodimus?”

 

Minimus knew, intellectually, that a second was a fixed unit of time, a constant; and yet the seconds while he waited for Rodimus to answer seemed endless. At last, Rodimus croaked, “How am I supposed to answer that?” He made a brusque gesture that – from Minimus’s viewpoint behind him – looked like angrily wiping at his optics, but there was no way to be sure. “Why the sudden interest?”

 

That stung. “I never stopped being interested in your wellbeing. You’re my...” Minimus hesitated, stumbling over all the things they’d never defined, and decided to simply say what was true. “You’re my captain.”

 

“Was.”

 

“You are my _captain,_ ” Minimus insisted softly.

 

After a moment, Rodimus said thickly, “Cargo bay’s through there; I know you don’t want to be stuck here any longer than -”

 

“I made up the issue with the shipping manifest,” Minimus blurted out.

 

That finally got Rodimus to turn around, optics wide in the dim corridor. “ _Why?_ ”

 

“I didn’t think you’d agree to talk to me otherwise.”

 

“Of course I would! I never…” He trailed off, and for the first time since Minimus had come onboard, there was a smile on Rodimus’s lips. A little weak, a little watery, but there. “You’re my second-in-command.”

 

Minimus could feel his own smile threatening to break through.

 

Rodimus’s grin turned mischievous. “I can’t believe _you_ fudged _paperwork._ ”

 

“Please don’t remind me.” Minimus shuddered slightly. “If you’re willing – is there somewhere we could speak?”

 

“In here.” Rodimus backtracked along the corridor and keyed in a door code. The double doors slid open, bathing the corridor in starlight. The far wall and the ceiling were taken up with a wide observation dome, below which there were chairs and a few low tables dotted around, and a neat shelf of datapads to one side. Clearly a space for the crew to relax, although at the moment it was empty.

 

“It’s lovely,” said Minimus politely.

 

“The best the _Exitus_ has to offer. Got nothing on the view from the _Lost Light,_ though.”

 

Rodimus’s face, in the pale glow of the stars outside, looked so bleak that Minimus edged closer, wanting to take his hand, unsure if it would be welcome. Instead, he murmured, “I know you miss it. But you’re still able to travel the galaxy, carry out missions, _help_ people. That must be something?”

 

“Sure.” There was that fake smile again, and Minimus lost patience.

 

He folded his arms and glared his erstwhile captain down. “ _Rodimus._ ”

 

And Rodimus, to Minimus’s honest surprise, didn’t try to keep up the pretence, but he also didn’t pull back and fold in on himself, the way he had been. Instead, he responded to Minimus’s scolding exactly as if they were back in the captain’s office on the _Lost Light –_ heaving a great sigh and throwing himself onto the nearest chair, and gazing up at Minimus with big, puppy-dog optics. It was so familiar that it was jarring.

 

Only for a moment. Then Rodimus said frankly, “I was a captain. With the best crew anyone could possibly imagine. Then the quest ended, and I wasn’t much of anything.” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I thought it was better to at least have something _like_ what I wanted. A ship, even if it’s not mine. A chance to see the galaxy, even if it’s only the same little bits of it over and over as we run errands for the new administration. After all, everyone else was moving on with their lives. You had moved on.” It was said without rancour, but it made Minimus’s spark give a sick lurch.

 

“I never meant to move on from _you._ ” _I never have._

 

Rodimus smiled again, and Minimus’s spark broke. “No – I was glad that you defended Megatron, there at the end. He needed you. And after that, well, you had your work. All of you – you all had real lives to get on with. The fact that you _could,_ and make a place for yourselves out there, and be happy: that’s what it was all for, Minimus.”

 

Minimus turned to stare out through the dome. The view was roughly the same as that from the surface of Luna-1, but something – perhaps some optical illusion – made the stars seem closer from the inside of a ship. Warmer. “You could have come with me. To Luna-1.”

 

“You didn’t need me hanging around at a loose end while you were working.”

 

Minimus gritted his teeth. “I was the duly appointed enforcer of the Tyrest Accord when I joined the _Lost Light_. I was offered a place of honour with the Galactic Council –”

 

“The Galactic – !”

 

“– and instead I chose to follow you. We weren’t even...” And again, his voice stuck on the question of _what had they been to each other._ Minimus made a frustrated sound deep in his throat. “We _weren’t even_ , then. I was there purely as your second-in-command, and it was a position for which I made sacrifices.”

 

When Rodimus spoke again, his voice was hoarse. “Do you regret it?”

 

“Not for a moment. It was...” He forced himself to say the rest. “It was the happiest time of my life. But. When it was over, _you_ could have come with _me_.”

 

“You never asked me to.”

 

Rodimus’s voice was suddenly much closer, and Minimus jumped. He swallowed against the shock of the proximity, the greater shock of the words, and said:

 

“I didn’t want to be an obligation. I was afraid that if it wasn’t your choice, you would grow bored staying in one place, and you would resent me. Rodimus –” Minimus turned to find his one-time captain standing only inches away. He reached up and wrapped both hands around one of Rodimus’s. “Did you really not know you would be welcome?”

 

The look in Rodimus’s optics was answer enough. Carefully, deliberately, Minimus leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Rodimus’s palm.

 

Rodimus let out a gasp, and then wrapped his arms around Minimus. “I’ve _missed you,_ Mims.”

 

“And I you.” Minimus rested his head against bright red plating, and felt a sense of _order_ restored. Something had been gnawing at him all these years, a constant wrongness, like a thousand crooked badges or a million misfiled arrest records. Now, it was as if the universe had realigned and come out right.

 

“Don’t leave.” He looked up and held Rodimus’s gaze. “Or if you must leave, take me with you.”

 

Rodimus beamed. “Promise.”

 

***

 

All in all, Thunderclash was remarkably generous about losing his second-in-command. (At least for now; he promised Rodimus that the position would always be his if he wanted to return.) The Rodimus who handed in his resignation looked millennia younger than the mech who’d staggered home from a funeral only a few hours earlier. In fact, he looked almost exactly like the young captain Thunderclash had once admired, the day the _Vis Vitalis_ had first encountered the _Lost Light._

 

“Thank you, sir,” Rodimus said, withdrawing his hand from Minimus Ambus’s long enough to salute. “For everything. I’m sorry if this leaves you shorthanded –”

 

“Not a problem, don’t worry.” Thunderclash squeezed the younger mech’s shoulder. “I’m just pleased that everything’s worked out. To see his crew happy in the end – what more could any captain ask?”

 

(Prowl was less generous when Minimus told him that he and Rodimus only intended to stay on Luna-1 a few years more, and that after the Bronze Harvest had passed its peak, they’d be heading out to see the wonders a peacetime universe could offer. But after seething for a minute, his fingers twitching dangerously towards desk-flipping territory, Prowl sat back in his chair and deadpanned, “Of course – I suppose you’re still hoping you can discover a cure out there for my _personality_ ,” and Rodimus laughed in spite of himself, and things went surprisingly smoothly from there.)

 

A few days later, Minimus found Rodimus leaning over the balcony outside their quarters on Luna-1, staring out at the stars. Minimus went and leaned, still a little hesitant, against him, and was gratified by how quickly Rodimus wrapped an arm around him.

 

“Where do you want to visit first, when we go?” Minimus asked.

 

“Mmmm. Hedonia.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Swerve had some… interesting stories.” Rodimus gave him a wink. “I’ve never actually seen you tipsy, Mims.”

 

“And you never will,” Minimus scolded, but without any real heat. He nestled closer. “It’ll be some time yet before I can leave here, you know. Are you eager to get back to exploring?”

 

“I’m looking forward to it.” Rodimus bent to kiss Minimus with an almost unbearable gentleness. “But I’ve got everything I need right here.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Though much is taken, much abides; and though   
> We are not now that strength which in old days   
> Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,   
> One equal temper of heroic hearts,   
> Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will   
> To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
> 
> \-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"


End file.
